My Specialized S-Works Shiv getting racked and ready for race day
Race day:
After flying into Cebu on the Thursday prior the race I had stayed pretty relaxed and come race morning felt ready to get on that start line and go hard right from the gun. The swim course was without question the most amazing swim leg I have done as it started on the resort beach with a coral reef filled with fish just meters below you. Once the gun went off I started hard and quickly took the lead within the first hundred meters. I have been training with a great swim squad over the last few months, which has really transformed my swimming ability making me a lot more efficient and faster in the water. I enjoyed setting the pace up front and managed to gap most of the field quite early on with just Brent McMahon, Casey Munro and Michael Murphy able to stay with me. I exited the water first feeling very relaxed and picked up a nice swim bonus paycheck for being the first athlete to reach dry land.
Leading out of the water
After the swim to bike transition the four of us hit the open road together with Brent setting the pace up front for the early part of the bike leg. I pulled through and did my share of the work up front with Casey keen to sit back and let Brent and myself do the majority of the work up front. Casey after the race told me that he felt quite sick during the ride, which made sense, as he is usually a very strong rider. With guys like Cameron Brown (10 time IM New Zealand Champion) behind I was eager to keep riding hard to extend our gap to the rest of the field chasing hard behind. After 20km’s Michael Murphy dropped from our group of 4 with, what I found out later was a bike mechanical issue. The back end of the course consisted of a 8 by 6km out and back ‘double M’ course which meant that we had a good mix of head wind and tail wind with each out and back section. I have never taken onboard any extra bottles during a half distance race before but with the extreme heat and humidity I decided to grab 2 ice cold water bottles to pour over my head and drink as much as I could at the 30km and 60km sections of the bike ride. I also took onboard another bottle towards the end of the bike leg, which I poured over my head in an attempt to cool my body down only to discover that this wasn’t in fact water but Gatorade. The entire ride was very windy not to mention scorching hot, which made for quite a tough 90 kilometres.
Getting off the bike I was ready to run hard and was feeling quite good even after such a hot and windy 90km ride. The 2 loop run course had spectators lining both sides of the road and the support and cheering was totally insane. Brent hit the gas as soon as we left transition and I pushed myself hard to try and keep the gap to a minimum however the duel Olympian showed me a clean set of heals and was just too fast.
The heat on the run was totally crazy and I felt like I was melting into the ground on each lap. At the aid stations there were small buckets of ice-cold water that people poured over your head to cool you down. This effect lasted for about 30 seconds before you were scorching hot once again. In addition to this there were also large baseball sized chucks of ice given out on the course, which I shoved down the front of my Scody tri suit. These large chunks of ice lasted roughly 4 km’s before completely melting. After the first lap I got a few words of encouragement yelled at me from Jensen Button (Formula 1 driver) who was just heading out to start his run leg. Hats off to Jensen for taking the time out of his race to give me some words of encouragement.
All in all I was very happy with 2nd place. I went into the race wanting the win badly but Brent had the goods on the day to take the win in the Philippines. Unfortunately this means that I am still chasing my first Ironman 70.3 victory, which I hope will come in 2014.
A huge thank you once again to all my sponsors, coach, family, support team and supporters. I honestly wouldn’t be where I am today with out all of your amazing support.
Race day crept up on me like always and I prepared to toe the start line on the famous Busselton course. The start was more of a gentleman’s agreement as the count down began and we all dove into the cold, clear waters together. I quickly found myself swimming side by side with young James Hodge the 2012 winner of this event. James and I rounded the far swim turn together before Courtney Atkinson kicked it up a gear and swam past me. Not one to let him get away I stayed glued to his feet for the remainder of the swim. Heading towards the swim exit I attempted to get past Courtney who wasn’t amused by all of this and also lifted his pace. I made the effort to sprint past Courtney up the beach and cross the timing mat with the fastest swim of the day and also a nice little swim prime bonus. A quick look over the shoulder confirmed that we had a nice two-man gap heading out onto the bike leg.
After all the injuries and lack of run training I resorted to settling into my own rhythm and pace in order to have the best run I could. Guy soon joined me and we ran together for most of the first run lap of 3. Guy was breathing hard and dropped off half way through lap 2 of the run leaving me in 5th place. With just one lap to go I wasn’t happy with the gap I had on 6th and 7th so I pushed just a little bit harder to make sure that once I hit the final turn my competitors saw that they had no chance of catching me.
With just 2 kms to go I heard a fellow pro on the other side of the road yell something to me, which I thought was ‘they are catching you’. A few hundred meters later and I clued onto what he had really said which was ‘Courtney is walking!’. I was pretty surprised to see Courtney Atkinson walking but it looked like his day was all over red rover. 
